It's about to get much easier to request repairs for broken equipment at DC public schools and recreation centers. In this year’s budget, the DC Council fully funded the addition of DC Public Schools (DCPS) and Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) facility maintenance requests to the city’s existing 311 system.

This means that any resident or visitor will be able to contact 311 for these service requests, just like they already can for dozens of other city services. They will also receive a 311 service request tracking number, emailed status updates, and the ability to call 311 for follow-up questions about the issue they flagged.

School and park users expect well-maintained and safe facilities. Sometimes things break, wear out, or just don’t work properly any longer. Even though DPR and DCPS run their own programs and facilities, they are generally not responsible for facility maintenance—that's the Department of General Services' (DGS) job. Unfortunately, the current process makes it difficult to point out these types of problems and causes extra administrative work for DGS, DPR, and DCPS.

Requests currently flow through facility staff to DGS

DPR and DCPS staff can submit their facilities maintenance requests to DGS online, but this places the entire burden on school and rec center staff to find and report broken things. As much as they walk around the facility, they might not notice every maintenance problem. Plus they have other responsibilities—like teaching classes and coaching basketball—so submitting maintenance reports might not be a top priority.

School and park users often are the first to notice what needs to be fixed, and generally want to help keep the facilities safe and usable. Yet under the current system, they’d still need to track down DCPS or DPR staff to submit the request to DGS. This isn’t ideal because a student on their way to class or a parent pushing their toddler on a swing may not want to interrupt what they’re doing to find staff and report a maintenance problem.

In late 2017, student journalists at Woodrow Wilson High School looked at widespread maintenance problems at their facility. The students inspected all of the bathrooms and water fountains for broken equipment and compared these issues to the number of open maintenance issues with DGS. All except two of the numerous bathroom problems were not open maintenance requests with DGS, “...suggesting either that issues are not being reported to DGS, or that they are the kind that can be handled in-house.”

Given that students can’t directly report problems to DGS in a trackable manner, it’s not surprising that there is a gap between the known problems and what has been reported by staff to DGS.

Informal reporting isn’t the same as using 311

There are other ways to request maintenance without contacting facility staff who would then report the issue to DGS. Sometimes I am walking or biking past a facility, notice something broken and want to report it without going into the facility to meet with staff. Other times, I’m at a school or rec center to watch an outdoor sports event and the building isn’t even open or staffed. Or, if I’m at a meeting with my kids’ teachers, I might not want to interrupt a series of scheduled meetings to find a staff person who can report the problem.

Over the years, I’ve tried using the District website email forms for DPR and DCPS. I nearly always receive responses, but the issues are rarely resolved without many follow-ups on my side. For safety concerns, I have escalated the issues to my Councilmember or the Mayor’s Community Outreach Assistant for the ward where the facility is located. Their intervention usually results in a successful repair. While I appreciate their help, it seems like an indirect way to have something fixed by DGS.

During recent years, I have used Twitter with mentions of @DCDPR or @DCPublicSchools along with mentioning @DCDGS since they perform the maintenance. Sometimes, one or more of the entities mentioned have responded to acknowledge the request, but the results have been inconsistent at best. There have been times when I have eventually had to contact a Councilmember or the Mayor’s office if it’s an unresolved safety issue.

Request via Twitter for DGS and DPR to trim overgrown weeds in bleachers at DPR's Banneker Rec Center. Later escalated to Mayor's office for resolution. Image by the author.

Request via Twitter for DGS and DCPS to repair missing and torn shades in Wilson High School auditorium. No response or resolution. Image by the author.

I couldn’t help comparing these experiences with the effectiveness of 311 requests in resolving other type of issues. When I submitted a bulk trash request, within minutes I received by email an assigned date for the pickup.

When I asked for a tree in my neighborhood to be trimmed or planted, several days later I received an email update through 311 with DDOT’s Urban Forestry Administration advising me on next steps. Abandoned bicycles stripped of parts were inspected within a week or two and later removed, according to email updates I received.

In all cases for the 85 different issues listed in DC311 or the mobile app, the submitter receives a service request number and the knowledge that the Office of Unified Communications (OUC) sent the request onto the appropriate agency for consideration. Issues could be escalated to the responsible agency, Mayor’s office, or a Councilmember by sharing the service request number for tracking purposes.

I wondered why DPR and DCPS maintenance weren’t available issues in 311, so I decided to ask the Council about it. I contacted the Committee on Transportation and the Environment staff with the idea. The staff thought the idea seemed reasonable, and they invited me to speak about the idea at the 2017 oversight hearings. I wasn’t available to attend, but the staff accepted my thoughts by email.

Several months later, the Committee staff contacted me with some good news: this idea had been fully funded in the fiscal year 2019 budget.

The Council approved a recommendation by Councilmember Mary Cheh and her staff providing one-time funding of $112,500 for the necessary updates to 311 by the Office of Unified Communications (OUC) and $5,000 for DGS to connect their workorder system with 311. According to Kelly Whittier, Director of Communications for Cheh, the Council also set aside $52,000 annually for the equivalent of one additional 311 employee for the incoming requests.

These changes, once implemented this year by OUC and DGS, will enable anyone anytime to submit service requests for DPR and DCPS maintenance through any of the existing 311 mechanisms: website, mobile application, or by calling 311. The requests will flow from OUC to DGS for processing in their existing system. On-site DPR and DCPS staff no longer need to be involved when residents and visitors want to report a problem for DGS to repair.

With 311, anyone can help with school and park maintenance

311 itself doesn’t fix issues—it only provides a centralized place for people to report problems to the District. Some complicated or expensive issues, such as roadway repair, can take months or years to assess and resolve.

But for many issues, 311 prevents people from having to research which agency provides the services requested and makes it easy to submit the request to one place. 311 then assigns a tracking number and routes the request to the appropriate agency. The assigned agency can then, if desired, use 311 to provide updates directly to the person who reported the issue.

Much of what is reported into 311 feeds into the larger DC Open Data initiative. This enables public review of the information and allows developers to built tools that improve how the data is used, such as the recently launched DC 311 Service Request Lookup available through Twitter.

DC 311 Service Request Lookup tool on Twitter, by Andrew Dunkman, to automatically create links for the status of service requests, even those created without emails. Image by the author.

The council also uses 311 data for oversight hearings. When a resident or visitor escalates a service request, the assigned 311 number and associated request information gives the council or mayor’s office a starting point when asking the assigned agency for an update.

The use of 311 for DCPS and DPR won't by itself fix parks and schools, but it will allow all of us to easily report worn out or broken equipment so DGS can make the necessary repairs.

]]>Mon, 28 Jan 2019 18:00:00 +0000Mitch Wander (Contributor)Tour buses have trouble parking in DC, so the city is giving them more spaceshttps://ggwash.org/view/70173/dc-is-trying-to-figure-out-where-to-park-motorcoaches
https://ggwash.org/view/70173/dc-is-trying-to-figure-out-where-to-park-motorcoaches

By spring 2019, the District will nearly double the number of street parking zones reserved for tour bus parking. These changes will allocate some limited curbside parking to create additional easy-to-use and safe places for large numbers of passengers visiting the District to get on and off motorcoaches.

Roughly one-third of the 21-25 million annual visitors to the District arrive by motorcoach, according to 2015 National Park Service (NPS) data. NPS estimates that 1,200 motorcoaches arrive each day during peak tourist season.

The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) wants these buses to transport passengers to and from their destinations while minimizing cruising in search of parking. Tour bus drivers circling the block for parking increases traffic congestion for other drivers and causes air pollution for everyone, while wasting fuel.

Expect more bus parking by Spring 2019

DDOT has already deployed three motorcoach parking zones: Virginia Avenue SW near Museum of the Bible, L'Enfant Plaza, and the 700 block of Frontage Road SW just south of L'Enfant Plaza and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The fourth location at Thomas Jefferson Drive NW has been deployed, but was not part of the initial plan for roll-out and currently shares space with food trucks.

“DDOT motorcoach parking only coming soon” sign posted on light pole at eastbound New York Avenue NW between 14th Street NW and 15th Street NW. Image by the author.

There are three additional locations that DDOT has planned for the first phase: 400 block of Independence Avenue SW near the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, and the 1100 block of Independence Avenue SW near the Freer and Sackler Galleries and L'Enfant Plaza that will be operational by the spring tourist season. In addition, the 1400 block of New York Avenue NW will be active starting sometime in January 2019.

DDOT has initiated the planning process for five other locations, however, they require further study of their feasibility.

Assuming phase one results in success for motorcoach drivers, passengers, and other District stakeholders, the second phase will look at commuter buses. This phase will need to account for traffic patterns starting earlier and ending later than typical rush hour, along with different locations. DDOT anticipates similar resources for commuter buses as is provided for tour buses.

Curbside parking for buses will benefit a greater number of people

Unlike passenger cars, tour buses don’t fit into most underground parking garages. This makes curbside parking an effective way to drop off the up to 60 passengers carried by a standard 45-foot motorcoach safely and conveniently.

According to Public Affairs Specialist Lauren Stephens, DDOT assumes that, “While not every bus will be full, it is generally cost prohibitive for tour groups to charter ‘empty’ buses.” DDOT plans to study bus passenger capacity and traffic trends.

DDOT makes space for each tour bus by removing three standard car parking spaces. While the parked cars may have carried a full load of passengers, the Federal Highway Administration estimates an average vehicle holds 1.7 people per car.

A fully loaded motorcoach parked in that space carrying up to 60 passengers replaces approximately 5.1 passengers in the three cars that would have parked instead. At the same time, a much larger number of people on a bus benefit from the curbside access, while a smaller number of drivers would incur the walk time from parking in an underground garage.

Bus drivers spoke, and DDOT Listened

These new locations aren’t DDOT’s first attempt to help with tour bus parking. There were already 30 on-street and parking lot bus spaces at approximately six locations owned by the District and NPS. Other pay-to-park locations included 20 spots in the Union Station garage and 100 more in the RFK Stadium lots. Two hundred more bus parking spaces are available between the National Arboretum, the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the National Zoo, and the Washington National Cathedral.

Double parked tour bus at eastbound New York Avenue NW between 14th Street NW and 15th Street NW. Image by the author.

But bus drivers, representing their passengers’ interests, said the RFK and Union Station lots weren’t useful for tour groups takings short visits to the National Mall. These lots were simply too far away, plus these bus parking locations lacked convenient and safe access to amenities like restrooms and restaurants.

DDOT reached out to NPS, Destination DC, and the American Bus Association to determine criteria for selecting locations near museums, memorials, monuments, and other desirable amenities. But they also looked for places with adequate sidewalk capacity, parking alternatives for cars, safe places, and nearby walkable areas including crosswalks.

Convenience will drive demand, not rules

Bus drivers are allowed to cruise around to look for parking or do something while their passengers tour the District. But they do have to obey traffic laws, adhere to normal parking regulations, and uphold commercial vehicle licensing requirements. Drivers can’t leave their vehicles idling for more than three minutes while stopped or parked, or five minutes when temperatures dip below freezing.

Convenience and cost will encourage drivers to park in these locations instead of cruising. For $6.90 an hour—triple the single parking space rate of $2.30—the driver can park in a legal location close to nearby attractions. Parking is allowed from 7 am until 6:30 pm for one to three hours, depending on location. Locations designated for overnight parking allow a bus to stay up to 12.5 hours between 6:30 pm and 7 am.

DDOT offers a one-stop webpage with the maps, guides, and information to keep motorcoach operators in compliance with laws and regulations, while steering them toward the available curbside parking for buses.

What will success look like?

DDOT acknowledges that, for curbside bus parking to work, DDOT will need to encourage drivers of personal vehicles to use off-street parking, mainly underground parking garages. At the same time, this could free up spaces for buses near the National Mall and other high-demand sites. DDOT will eventually provide overnight parking for multi-day trips.

Curbside motorcoach parking has the potential to move more people safely, efficiently, and closer to where they want to be. We are a city that that earns $7.5 billion in tourism revenue and supports over 75,000 tourism-related jobs. These types of transportation changes may not only increase the fun for tourists—the improvements could also drive more jobs, profits, and tax revenue on our way to another record tourism year.

Correction: This post has been updated to reflect that there are three additional locations that DDOT has planned for the first phase, not two, and DDOT has initiated the planning process for five other locations, not six.

People are more likely to feel that bicycling is a safe, effective means of getting around when stolen bicycles are recovered and abandoned bikes are removed. This also makes stealing bicycles less attractive. In DC, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and Department of Public Works (DPW) are the agencies that work together to provide these behind-the-scenes services.

Thieves commonly go after tires, seats, and even frames from locked bicycles. Various factors may make theft more feasible: weak locks, sparse nearby foot traffic, poor lighting, or long-term storage (though of course this doesn't excuse theft in any way). When bicycles are securely locked, it's more difficult to steal the entire bike or its expensive parts, and a thief may look for a bike that's easier to steal instead.

Here's what happens when a bicycle or bicycle part is stolen in DC.

DPW removes abandoned bikes

Sometimes people abandon their bike where it's locked when it's missing one or more parts that make it unusable or uneconomical to repair. DPW relies on the public to report these abandoned bicycles online or by contacting 311. The service request requires information about missing parts or other indications that show the bicycle is likely abandoned.

When someone submits a 311 request about an abandoned bike, DPW puts a sticker on the bike stating that the bike has been reported as abandoned. The sticker notes that the bike will be removed within 10 days if not claimed. Although DPW performs this service, the stickers show the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) logo because this used to be a DDOT responsibility.

Anyone who believes their bike has been removed by DPW should call 311 and provide a description of the bicycle. If DPW finds a match among the bikes in its inventory, DPW will contact the owner to return the bike, if it's still in their possession. If DPW has already donated the bike, DC Office of Risk Management will issue compensation to the owner.

DPW Director Chris Shorter said that removing abandoned bicycles from public spaces is part of DPW’s mission to keep the District looking its best. It also frees up space to lock other bicycles.

The agency removes abandoned bicycles from poles, bike racks, and other places and stores them for one month to give owners the opportunity to claim them. After the month is up, DPW donates unclaimed, salvagable bikes to Bikes for the World, a nonprofit organization that offers free bicycles and training to people in need around the world.

DPW removed 792 abandoned bicycles in fiscal year 2017 and 658 bicycles in fiscal year 2018.

MPD recovers stolen and abandoned bicycles

The DC Metropolitan Police Department conducts a different mission when it comes to stolen and abandoned bicycles. Bicycles are among the many types of property that MPD recovers regularly, including motor vehicles, scooters, ATVs, cameras, and cell phones. MPD recovers hundreds of bicycles each year, and it returned four bicycles to their owners during 2017 and year-to-date 2018.

According to MPD, these bikes are inventoried by its Evidence Control Branch, which then posts photos online. After 90 days in MPD’s possession, MPD considers the bicycle to be abandoned and reserves the right to dispose of it.

MPD may use information such as a bike registry to locate a bicycle’s owner. MPD encourages residents to register their bikes with the National Bike Registry, which combined with 529 Garage to form a single registry.

MPD auctions unclaimed property through GovDeals or donates them to nonprofit organizations.

Beyond recovering bicycles, MPD also arrests bicycle thieves to prevent them from stealing again and also to deter others from committing similar thefts. During calendar years 2016 and 2017, MPD arrested 44 and 56 suspects for bicycle theft, respectively. This year through November 20, 2018, MPD has made 32 arrests for bicycle theft.

Bicycle owners and the DC government play key roles too

Nobody wants to have their bicycle or its parts taken. We bicycle owners can do our part by using secure locks, carefully choosing where and how we lock our bikes, registering our bikes, and taking prompt action if our bike is stolen.

It’s also helpful to understand and use the services provided by DPW and MPD. Together, we can reduce bike thefts, clean up abandoned bikes in public space, and increase the possibility of bicycles being returned to their rightful owners.

This article has been updated with information from MPD about how many bicycles it returned to owners.

When people speak out about issues in their communities, sometimes the powers that be actually listen. In September 2017, the Washington Area Bicycle Association noticed that most of the crosswalk signs along Rock Creek Park Trail telling pedestrians and cyclists to stop had been swapped with signs that encourage trail users to cross with caution.

The previous signs were confusing and at odds with District law, making them potentially dangerous as well. The change was great, but what’s more interesting was what led the National Park Service to make the change, and why they were a problem in the first place.

Previous signs may have conflicted with District law

I recently asked NPS what had prompted the new signs last year. Public Affairs Specialist Jonathan Shafer told me NPS changed the signs “after conversations with a community partner group in 2017.” (The representative didn’t share which community group.) That group had inquired whether pedestrians or drivers had the right of way at these marked crosswalks, and NPS' investigation eventually revealed the answer.

Previously, each marked crossing had two signs: on top a standard stop sign and below that a yellow sign stating “Trail Users Yield to Traffic” in all caps. This combination at every Rock Creek Trail crosswalk implied that drivers on the roadway had the right of way and trail users had to yield.

Previous signs. Image created with Google Maps.

These signs seemed to be inconsistent with District law, which reads: “The driver of a vehicle shall stop and remain stopped to allow a pedestrian to cross the roadway within any marked crosswalk…”

The law also states that cyclists and people riding personal mobility vehicles “shall have the rights and duties applicable to a pedestrian” at crosswalks, through cyclists must also yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk.

Drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists used to District law at crosswalks had to reconcile these signs with what they believed to be the law. That matters, because confusion can lead to unnecessary safety risks.

Replacement signs aligned with District law

The question prompted NPS to consult with the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) to review the signs and consider what might be more appropriate instead. They found that the existing signs indeed weren't consistent with DC law.

NPS and the FHA then consulted the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Design (MUTCD), which regulates the standards for all traffic control devices in the US, to identify better signage. At each crosswalk, NPS completely removed the stop sign and replaced the yellow sign with much different text: “Pedestrians and Cyclists Use Caution When Crossing,” also in all caps.

Shafer added that NPS kept stop signs in one situation. That's because the MUTCD requires a stop sign on shared-use paths at points where bicyclists are required to stop, specifically when a crosswalk goes across the trail.

A good question led to a great result

Of course, signage can only do so much. As this recent video of a child almost being struck by a driver on Piney Branch Road in Silver Spring illustrates, we often need physical infrastructure improvements to protect people walking and bicycling from cars.

Nonetheless, the change better aligns with how other crosswalks work in the District, and the consistent expectations for people walking, bicycling, and driving help eliminate confusion. All users now have the same obligations and rights at Rock Creek trail crosswalks, just like any any other crosswalk in the District.

The previous signs could have stayed forever had that unidentified community group not asked NPS to review them. This goes to show that questioning the status quo can lead to safety improvements for all users!

]]>Fri, 12 Oct 2018 16:00:00 +0000Mitch Wander (Contributor)DC’s rivers could be swimmable in the next several yearshttps://ggwash.org/view/68866/dcs-rivers-could-be-swimmable-in-the-next-several-years
https://ggwash.org/view/68866/dcs-rivers-could-be-swimmable-in-the-next-several-years

The reasons why you can’t safely or legally swim in the District’s rivers could be resolved within the next several years — a concrete milestone for clean rivers which until recently seemed difficult to envision. This would open new outdoor recreation opportunities city-wide, and enhance the quality of life for residents and visitors.

For many years, poor water quality alone was enough to keep people from wanting to swim in our rivers. Local nonprofits that monitor the Potomac and Anacostia have documented what seems like slow but steady progress.

The Potomac Conservancy graded the Potomac a “B” in 2018, rising from a D- in 2007. The Anacostia Watershed Society rated the Anacostia a D- in 2018, the river’s first passing grade, with the ability to swim in the Anacostia by 2025 a stated goal. Both organizations, Rock Creek Conservancy, and their volunteers conduct extensive hands-on activities to improve our rivers.

This progress manifests itself in many ways, according to N. Shulterbrandt and Jeffrey Seltzer in the District Department of Energy and Environment Water Quality Division. Bald eagles are now nesting and breeding in the District. The American shad (a type of migratory herring) population continues to recover. Researchers have seen reductions of nitrogen in our waterways and a massive reduction of trash. They’re also noticing healthier fish, along with increased aquatic vegetation.

None of these favorable indicators on their own can make swimming safe and legal in the District. Yet, over a period of several years, there have been incremental signs of movement in this direction.

DC allows swimming for special events

A 1971 District law prohibited swimming in District’s waters. In 2007, improved water quality led the District to allow for exceptions in order to host special events, such as the swim leg of a triathlon. However, the permission was contingent on water quality testing during a specified time period prior to the event, and the rulemaking only covered the Potomac because the its water quality has improved sooner than the Anacostia's.

The Nation’s Triathalon successfully held its race in 2008, including the swim. Since then, race organizers have announced the cancellation of the swim (leaving only the bicycling and running legs) in years when the water quality did not meet required standards.

In 2012, what is now called the DC Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) amended the swimming ban in DC Municipal Regulations to formally allow swimming in the Potomac River for special events. In 2018, DOEE extended the same special events process to cover the Anacostia River. The event organizer still needed to submit the results of a water quality test, and DOEE could refuse permission if the test results failed to meet standards or any situations adversely impact water quality, such as a combined sewage overflow that frequently occurred after rainfall.

The rulemaking to allow only special events contained an intriguingly optimistic phrase, stating that “primary contact recreation shall remain prohibited…until such time as the standards…for Class A beneficial use are consistently maintained.” This seemed to imply that at some point when water quality improved, DOEE would be prepared to revisit the traditional swimming ban, and not only for special events.

What does “consistently maintained” mean?

The Municipal Regulations as currently written reference a standard rivers must meet before swimming is allowed. These standards, consistent with federal water quality requirements, set criteria for three measurements: one bacteriological (E. coli) and two physical (pH and turbidity).

On a weekly basis from May to September, DOEE employees test three locations in each the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers: one in the Washington Channel, and two in Rock Creek. Most of the river measurements occur near bridges: Key, 14th Street, Haines Point, New York Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, and South Capitol.

DOEE publishes the most recent data online for public review, though only river data and not Rock Creek has been published as of this time due to greater interest in river water quality. DOEE emphasizes that this data is not real-time enough to allow swimming, nor is swimming currently legal except for special events.

For example, in July 2018 there were five weekly measurements which are used to calculate a 30-day mean. Washington Channel, Key, 14th Street, and Haines Point met the E. coli standard at least four out of five times, but New York Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, and South Capitol did so two or fewer times.

Every location on both rivers met the pH standard at least four times, though there appeared to be a spike above the standard at nearly every location on July 2. For the past three months, all sites moved nearly in lockstep regarding turbidity depending, meeting standard some weeks and missing it others, likely dependent on recent heavy rainfall

What has not been established is how DOEE will assess “consistently maintained.” DOEE wants to obtain more data and then solicit stakeholder feedback on how to define this term. Additional data will, for example, come from a recently-awarded citizen monitoring grant to Anacostia Riverkeeper. This will enable the organization to recruit and train volunteers to obtain more frequent samples for water quality monitoring. DOEE hopes this will be fully operational by spring 2019.

Where will we be allowed to swim?

Specific locations will be designated based on river access, public safety, and water quality, along with other considerations identified by stakeholders. For example, DOEE has not started any formal legal research or discussions related to federal laws or regulations related to access from NPS land. DOEE wants to keep all options open, and is aware of some District-owned properties that could also be considered depending on NPS interest.

Once DOEE has feedback, it will refine the frequency and locations for testing that will allow for swimming at select locations in the District. Informally, DOEE believes that water quality will only need to be consistently maintained in areas near allowable swimming, without having to wait for all of the Potomac, Anacostia, and Rock Creek within the District to meet standards. DOEE also wants to avoid areas with contaminated sediment.

What will it take for the District to make all this happen?

Unfortunately, DC only controls a small portion of the watershed that feeds the city’s portion of our two rivers along with Rock Creek. DOEE will continue to work with our upstream jurisdictions to align our water quality efforts. There is much left to do, particularly regarding stormwater runoff containing contaminants. Peak rains remain troublesome because of contaminated stormwater runoff pouring into our waterways.

Within the District, DC Water is in the middle of its Clean Rivers Program mandated by a 2005 consent decree with the EPA. Large tunnels, some of which are already in place, will allow combined sewer overflow to be stored during heavy rainfall and later treated instead of flowing directly into our rivers. These will be completed in 2023 for the Anacostia and 2030 for the Potomac.

Green infrastructure to address Rock Creek will be installed by 2030. The infrastructure would reduce contaminated stormwater runoff volume by 96% across the Potomac, the Anacostia, and Rock Creek — by 98% in the Anacostia specifically.

DOEE, DC Water, Anacostia Riverkeeper, Potomac Conservancy, Rock Creek Conservancy and others, including numerous volunteers, continue a broad range of efforts to make our waterways safe, beautiful, and swimmable. DC is planning to reach out to residents, recreational users, Congress, the EPA, DC and US Park Police, and others to get input on implementing a plan for safe and legal swimming.

A broad coalition of visionary, dedicated organizations and volunteers can savor a big win once our rivers are declared ready for swimming. But most of all, in a city that normally has 109 days a year at or over 80 degrees, swimming in our rivers will be a fun way to for residents and tourists to cool off.

Pedestrian fatalities in the District overwhelmingly occur during periods of limited natural light; nearly 84% of pedestrian fatalities from 2015 until now happened during night, dawn, or dusk. Any effort to eliminate pedestrian fatalities will need to identify factors that can reduce the dangers to people walking during darker times of the day.

This is a real problem, but unfortunately discussions about it often blame the victim and insist people must have special brightly-colored clothes if they want to safely walk at night time. That kind of thinking stigmatizes pedestrians for engaging in normal human activity, and clearly isn't the right answer.

DC's Vision Zero plan aims to eliminate pedestrian fatalities and serious injuries by 2024. The program seeks to improve road design, traffic safety enforcement, data analysis, and education for all transportation users in order to meet this goal.

These targeted efforts have the potential to increase safety at all times of the day. But there is a substantial opportunity to focus on those with the greatest benefit during darkness if we want specifically to reduce or eliminate pedestrian fatalities.

My analysis shows dark periods are dangerous for people walking

Nationwide, about three out of four pedestrian fatalities occur at night (74.4%) or during dawn or dusk (3.4%), a total of 77.7% during darker periods. However, District pedestrian fatalities occur even more disproportionately at night (74.4%) or during dawn or dusk (9.3%). Overall, in DC only 16.3% happen during the day, with a total of 83.7% happening at night, dawn, or dusk. In fact, 100% of pedestrian fatalities so far in 2018 and during the entirety of 2016 occurred at night.

According to my analysis of press releases about pedestrian fatalities, the District has experienced eight pedestrian fatalities in year-to-date 2018 and 11, nine, and 15 in 2017, 2016, and 2015 respectively. (The Metropolitan Police Department's annual data reflect when the pedestrian died. Two pedestrians were struck in 2017 and died in 2018.)

Of the 43 pedestrian fatalities covered by my analysis, 42 involved motor vehicle drivers and one involved a bicyclist. My analysis considered the content of 36 available MPD and US Park Police (USPP) media releases that provide brief narratives, supplemented by MPD Major Crash Unit information for the other seven fatalities.

Despite the growth in the District population — including pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers, during the business day — this isn’t when most of the fatalities occur. Only 32.6% occur between 7:00 am to 6:30 pm on Monday through Friday. More specifically, 25.6% were during rush hour as defined by parking restrictions (7:00-9:30 am and 4:00-6:30 pm), with 7% occurring during the business day excluding rush hour (9:30 am to 4:00 pm).

Much of the visible traffic direction and enforcement by DDOT and MPD occurs during these hours, and that likely enhances pedestrian safety during the business day. Slightly more than one-third (37.2%) of fatalities occurred during weekend hours, from dusk Friday until dawn Monday.

Fatalities are spread throughout the District without a concentration downtown. Across all hours, 14.0% of fatalities occurred within the Central Business District, leaving over four out of five outside downtown.

There are multiple reasons why darker times are more deadly

Some conditions can be different at darker times, potentially contributing to these fatalities. Drivers and pedestrians can’t see as far, even with nearly universal streetlights. There are often fewer cars and pedestrians on the road, enabling drivers to go faster while fewer pedestrians may be less noticable. A suboptimal road or crosswalk design might cause a greater hazard at night than during daylight.

Alcohol consumption also often happens later in the day; all five of the fatalities with announced DUI arrests in the press release occurred between sunset and sunrise. Traffic safety enforcement and staff directing traffic tend to happen around school and work locations and during weekday business hours. When the days are shorter in the winter and surrounding months, darkness overlaps with rush hour traffic combining two risk factors.

Each pedestrian fatality is tragic, and no two narratives are alike given the variations in drivers, pedestrians, cars, roads, and atmospheric conditions. But in DC, even more than nationwide, we clearly see most pedestrian fatalities happen during darker periods — yet not every Vision Zero action necessarily addresses this difference when there is less natural light.

What do you think would have the greatest impact on reducing pedestrian fatalities in the District?

DC Water plays a small yet important role in making District streets safe and usable for bicyclists. While the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) takes care of nearly all of our street and sidewalk infrastructure, DC Water maintains stormwater drains and grates. Grates with bars in the direction of travel mean big trouble for bicyclists.

Drivers and bicyclists prefer smooth surfaces for their trips. However, obstacles like potholes, utility repairs and road debris, streetcar tracks, and some stormwater grates can require lane changes or even cause wrecks for cyclists. Grates oriented in the direction of traffic are more than an inconvenient bump — they’re downright dangerous. A bicycle comes to an immediate halt when a wheel gets caught in the grates.

Current standards require bike-friendly grates

The Federal Highway Administration recommends a few different grate designs to minimize risks for bicyclists. Bars can be perpendicular to the direction of travel or, when the bars follow the direction of travel, there can be crossbars up to 6 inches apart to keep wheels from getting caught. There are also designs with small shapes like a hexagon that achieve the same safety effect.

DDOT’s Design Guide has additional examples that seem to be even more stringent about the direction of the bars. None of the DDOT examples allow bars in the direction of travel, even with small spacing, nor does DDOT allow diagonal bars.

DC Water maintains approximately 1,400 stormwater grates out of their 25,000+ grates and catch basins. While there are no statistics kept on how many are oriented with or perpendicular to traffic, DC Water remains committed to replacing any that are not bike-friendly. They just don’t have perfect awareness of where those remaining grates are to proactively replace them.

As with other infrastructure in the District, there are exceptions to who fixes what. DC Water doesn’t maintain grates or catch basins on private property, federal highways, elevated structures like bridges and National Park Service land. Overall, if DC water repairs or upgrades a grate or catch basin, it takes full responsibility for restoring the roadway and adjacent sidewalks to their original state.

Replacement of a grate can cost as little as a few hundred dollars if DC Water can simply swap out the grate. If, on the other hand, DC Water needs to dig up the roadway to replace the grate, the excavation and restoration of the roadway can cost a few thousand dollars.

Constituent requests help with grate replacement

Fortunately, DC Water responds to constituent requests when someone notices and reports a non-bike friendly stormwater grate. I first noticed one in December 2016 while biking southbound on 15th Street NW in the bike lanes adjacent to Meridian Hill Park. The grate, oriented in the direction of traffic, forced bicyclists to use only a portion of the bike lane. I didn’t know which entity handled these requests, so I sent it via Twitter to @DCWater with a mention of @DDOTDC, just in case. I also didn't realize that, in my Tweets, I was imprecisely referring to stormwater grates as storm drains.

Image by the author.

DC Water humorously advised me that they’d look into it and said that it wasn’t in DDOT’s lane (my pun, not DC Water’s). There was some additional back and forth discussion regarding responsibility. In the end, DC Water replaced the grate with one facing perpendicular to traffic, and then restored the asphalt roadway to its original condition.

Image by the author.

Months after this small success, I avoided a similar problem on Reservoir Road NW by steering around a non-bike friendly stormwater grate. I stopped, took a photo, and posted it for @DCWater on Twitter. Within a few weeks, once again DC Water replaced the grate with one turned the other direction. In this case, the traffic lane is relatively narrow, so without the fix a bicyclist would have to move farther into traffic to avoid the hazard. Once again, DC Water returned to restore the asphalt road surface.

Image by the author.

Image by the author.

This is the Reservoir Road grate after repairs. Image by the author.

Anyone who sees DC Water infrastructure (such as non-bike friendly grates) that need repairs or pose a safety hazard can report it for inspection and, if necessary, replacement. DC Water accepts reports at its 24-hour Command Center by phone at (202) 612-3400 or @DCWater on Twitter, as I reported the two grates for replacement.

All users benefit from well-designed road infrastructure. Stormwater grates with bars in the direction of travel can cause particular problems just for cyclists. Until the day when all those legacy ones have been replaced, DC Water remains ready to accept requests for replacement. If you see one, send a Tweet or make the call, so we all benefit.

Over the years, I've read about how my Advisory Neighborhood Commission has advocated for new crosswalks in Glover Park. I have also researched and written some GGWash posts about streets and sidewalks, lots of which have crosswalks. But I recently realized that I still had a lot of questions about why crosswalks go where they do and how they are maintained.

I asked DDOT Communications Specialist, Michelle Phipps-Evans, a bunch of questions about crosswalks, and she helped me understand the basics. Here are ten bits of crosswalk trivia I learned:

1. There are more crosswalks than you think there are

People generally think of crosswalks as the marked lines across the street. But crosswalks exist whether marked or not exist at every intersection of one or more streets according to the law in the District and all 50 states. DC's rules define a legal crosswalk occurring at the intersection of a roadways, even when there are no markings on the pavement.

While DDOT doesn’t have an exact count of crosswalks, on the maintenance side 1,225 crosswalks were installed and refreshed in the past five years.

2. Some new crosswalks are DDOT’s idea, yet many come from resident suggestions

Residents contact DDOT when an intersection is “missing” a crosswalk, meaning that there are no painted markings on the street at a specific intersection. Markings installed at intersections without traffic signals are referred to as uncontrolled crosswalks. In other cases, residents ask DDOT to consider installing a mid-block crossing, but the rule is that those must be at least 250 feet away from intersections with traffic signals.

DDOT also examines installing crosswalks during nearby DDOT projects and those completed by private developers.

The people who decide whether to paint a crosswalk first look at roadway width and vehicular traffic volumes. Phipps-Evans illustrated this point by adding, “for example, we do not want to install a new, uncontrolled crosswalk across a major arterial, like Connecticut Avenue NW, because of the width of roadway and heavy traffic volumes.”

For mid-block locations in particular, DDOT examines whether there are sufficient pedestrian generators such as bus stops, residences, commercial uses, recreational uses, and schools. If there are heavy left-hand turn volumes, DDOT might only install the marked crosswalk on the right side of the intersection to balance vehicular congestion with pedestrian connections.

4. Yet there are ways to make crosswalk locations more frequently-used, and safer

DDOT is working with WMATA to remove and consolidate bus stops when doing so means safer conditions for pedestrians. DDOT generally avoids uncontrolled crossings within 350’ of an intersection with a traffic signal because sometimes focus on the signal in the distance instead of people in the upcoming marked crosswalk.

But DDOT will consider a crosswalk across a major arterial roadway when the agency can make the crosswalk more visually noticeable to drivers than simple painted lines. These types of crosswalks are referred to as “enhanced control,” and examples include High-Intensity Activated crossWalK (HAWK) signals. In fact, DDOT installed enhanced control signals at a record pace in 2016 and now operates 15 HAWKs and 12 Rectangular Rapid Flash Beacons (RRFBs).

5. Crosswalks can only go in locations compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

The ADA, a law signed in 1990, ensures equal opportunity and access to people with disabilities. The US Department of Transportation sets federal accessibility standards that apply to curbs and sidewalks based on ADA. Any new crosswalk location must have ADA accommodations such as curb ramps with detectable warning strips.

DDOT will only install a crosswalk at a location where those features can be installed, and the agency avoids crossings that would potentially conflict with drainage, streetlights, or utility poles.

6. Crosswalks wear out and resident service requests prompt most repainting

Resident requests cause about 85 percent of crosswalk marking restriping, with DDOT inspectors identifying the rest. Older markings last two to five years on asphalt roadways. These markings fade even faster than normal on high volume traffic roadways and on concrete roadways where they may only last 18 months. Manufactures keep improving thermoplastic used for markings and the current technology can last up to five years, even in high traffic locations.

DDOT's Safety Team identifies locations for pedestrian pylons, also known as in-street stop for pedestrian, a sign at least 3’ high normally paced on double yellow centerlines or even center concrete islands. Pedestrian pylons cost $291 for materials and $50 for labor to install. For that modest investment, a pylon provides a visual reminder for drivers. DDOT has installed 500 pedestrian pylons and they last about a year… unless a driver runs over them.

9. Some crosswalks need to be removed to make streets safer for pedestrians

New research from the from the Federal Highway Administration shows that simply marking crosswalks on high volume, multi-lane streets dramatically increases the risk for pedestrians trying to cross. Pedestrians are safer in these locations only with other enhancements, such as HAWK signals or adding a traffic signals. DDOT will identify where HAWKs, RRFBs, refuge islands – a protected space in the middle of a street – and traffic signals can serve as enhancements at reasonable intervals along corridors. Safety research indicates that crosswalks should be removed when it can’t be substantially enhanced.

10. DDOT planning changes will lead to better decisions and safer pedestrian crossings

Pedestrians can walk across several or even dozens of crosswalks each day without appreciating the complexity of crosswalk locations and maintenance. These top issues and their explanations may be useful to residents when making crosswalk-related requests in the District.

I work near the White House, and I see near misses—and sometimes crashes—between bicyclists and pedestrians in the 15th Street bike lanes there way too often. I reported my concerns to the District Department of Transportation, and the agency is going to change the bike lanes’ design this summer.

The two-way bikeway along 15th Street is directly adjacent to the sidewalk that runs next to the Department of the Treasury and Sherman Park. Some of the traffic signals are almost completely obscured by trees until you’re in the crosswalks, and especially for southbound cycists, who are going downhill, that’s often way too late to stop.

At first, I assumed that the protected bike lanes and crosswalks were as good as it gets. Having no formal training in street design or traffic safety, I wondered whether there was any chance DDOT might look at the current design and consider improving it. I figured that a quick email was worth a try, so I wrote to DDOT Director Leif Dormsjo.

Within days, DDOT Bicycle Program Specialist Mike Goodno wrote back to me with some initial observations and the promise of an on-site visit. Goodno and a DDOT transportation engineer walked along the bike lane, focusing on the 15th Street intersections with G Street, F Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

There's a stop light on the right side of the bike lane here, but you can't see it because of the trees. Image by Jonathan Neeley.

Goodno had five ideas for how to improve the situation:

Restripe the pavement markings, which had become faded over time.

Move the existing “Stop for Peds” pavement markings farther away from the crosswalks. They should be 25 feet away from the crosswalks, reminding bicyclists to stop well before the crosswalk.

Remove a flex post in both directions near each crosswalk and replace with a “Stop for Pedestrians” pylon.

Ask the Urban Forestry Administration to determine whether the trees can be trimmed to make the traffic signals more visible. It’s possible, however, that the trees are still too small for trimming.

Goodno acknowledged the value of completing these quickly. He also noted, however, “I would like to do this soon but, in reality, it’s likely that the changes would not occur until summer.”

This is DDOT learning and adapting to good bike lane policy

I’m excited about the plans and to see whether the changes help. But when I talked to Goodno, I also asked why they weren’t built into the design when the 15th Street bike lanes were installed in 2009 and 2010.

Goodno explained that DDOT installed these two-way protected bikeways before there was national guidance for this type of facility. The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) first released its Urban Bikeway Design Guide in March 2011. Goodno commented that more cities installing bike lanes, along with the publication of the guide, are evidence that “the craft is progressing and heading towards standardizations of certain treatments.”

My experience providing feedback to the DDOT Bicycle Program has been wonderful. There seems to be a commitment to continuous improvement and a willingness to reconsider existing designs. In fact, Goodno lists his email address and phone number right on the website. He encourages people to contact him with input or to submit issues to 311.

It’s still too early to tell whether these planned changes along 15th Street will solve the issues that I brought up. I’d like to believe that my modest feedback will make some heavily used bike lanes and crosswalks better for all users. I hope this experience will encourage others to share their suggestions and criticism with local governments since we can all benefit from each other’s ideas for safe and useful transportation infrastructure.

]]>Wed, 10 May 2017 16:30:00 +0000Mitch Wander (Contributor)My family went from having two cars to hundreds. Here’s how.https://ggwash.org/view/62948/ditching-our-car-meant-hundreds-of-new-transportation-options-for-my-family
https://ggwash.org/view/62948/ditching-our-car-meant-hundreds-of-new-transportation-options-for-my-family

But after my 1998 Volkswagen broke down for good and finances forced us to hold off on buying a replacement right away, we slowly realized that a second car wasn’t our only option.

The single car life

In reality, the operating costs of having a second car weren’t so high: Residential parking, registration and inspection fees combined to cost less than a dollar a day in the District, and insurance and gas for a car that I drove 4,000 miles per year at most seemed virtually insignificant. Buying another car, however, was a far different undertaking than maintaining one we already owned. We decided to delay purchasing a second car and explore some alternatives.

I started by researching ZipCar but found that it wasn’t cost-effective for my frequent short drives that required me to park for upwards of ten hours before returning. car2go also didn’t work since I was making long trips outside the District.

A real solution reared its head when I started to look at traditional rental cars. I figured they’d be too pricey, but compared to what a second car would cost, they were actually inexpensive in the fall and winter months: I could bike to the airport for a car rental priced at $15-$20 per day, and for another $10-$20 per day, I could rent from Union Station or Woodley Park.

The summer, however, was a different matter, as rental cars can cost $100 or more per day during the peak season. I lucked out one month when my Reserve work wasn’t at its normal location, and another month, I hosted a colleague at my house for the weekend and swapped meals for a ride. The good fortune got me through the summer until rental prices dipped back to a more manageable $30-$35 per day in the fall, and before I knew it, I had met a year’s worth of Army Reserve obligations without needing another car.

Beyond work, I needed to cover family excursions for which I had previously used our second car. For solo shopping and personal trips in the District, I started to rely more heavily on my bike and the Metrobus system. When our kids needed to be in multiple places, I’d rent a car2go, and when that didn’t work, we used Uber. We’ve even had some recent outings that have relied on entertaining combinations of all these options.

A new reality

Operating without a second car meant learning about DC’s menu of transportation options. A few years ago, a lack of information might have steered my family away from most choices other than driving. But mobile phone apps for Uber and car2go, along with Google Maps, have helped us put traditional rental cars, car2go, buses, bicycle rides and walking to use. It turns we needed a second car a lot less than we thought.

My wife and I realized we had a new “normal” when, after his sister pointed out that we only had one car to drive on a day with a packed schedule, my son quickly responded, “No, we have hundreds of cars. There are car2go cars all over the place.”

If an 11-year-old can buy into the District’s range of transportation options, so can I.

This post first ran in 2014, but since the information is still relevant, we wanted to share it again.

I wanted to do some hands-on learning about ride hailing as well as make some extra money, so two months ago, I started using our family minivan to drive for Uber. Recently, I added Lyft. The trips I’ve driven have gone best when passengers make it easy to find them and ask for pickup at a location that makes sense given the time and where they’re heading, and when they order the right kind of car and look out for their own safety.

I only have 200 trips under my belt, but I think I have the basics down. I also actively read blogs by experienced drivers and follow a bunch of driver chat rooms and social media posts.

Something I’ve noticed is that there are a good amount of trips that have preventable delays that don’t benefit anyone and, worse yet, may add traffic to congested areas. With a bit more planning and communication on everyone’s part, I think we could speed trips for passengers while giving drivers the chance to move onto other revenue producing trips and miles. Who wouldn’t want that?

These ideas can save you a few minutes as a passenger and probably eliminate most of the speedbumps. I do want to note: if you need or want door to door pickup because of weather, luggage, limited mobility or just because, that’s perfectly fine, too. After all, the driver is working for the passenger.

Here’s my advice:

1. Think small… small buildings, that is

When you use the ride hailing app, it gives drivers a street address and point on the map based on what the passenger entered. Buildings like the Convention Center, Verizon Center, many hotels and apartment buildings, the National Mall, museums, monuments, and parks are a city block long or even multiple blocks. Google Maps and Waze, which lots of drivers use to supplement the app, sometimes picks the wrong side of the building, like when I approached a hotel on K Street when the passenger waited on Pennsylvania Avenue.

If you can find and walk to nearby building that’s smaller from where you hail your ride, you’ve created a small target with a precise address where the driver can find you even with crowds, at night, or in traffic.

2. As a solid second choice, pick an intersection as your pickup location

Instead of a large building or a city block without addresses, use a nearby intersection. The upside of doing this is that the driver isn’t searching the length of a city block for you.

If you go the intersection route, consider calling the driver to share exactly where you are. A driver who approaches the wrong corner and misses you could have to go around one or sometimes a few traffic-choked blocks if they miss you the first time.

I’ve had to circle some of the larger hotels, especially when I didn’t know which entrance the passenger was using or the building faced two or more streets. An intersection might have worked better.

3. Avoid crowds and congestion

If you order a ride at 2:30 am on a Friday night near 14th and U Streets NW, your driver will probably need to navigate two or three blocks of heavy congestion to get to you; then they’ll need to do it again to get your trip started. To avoid this, walk a couple blocks, ideally in the direction you’ll be traveling in, and order your ride where the driver and you can stay out of the traffic and crowds.

Your driver doesn’t want to get caught in a traffic standstill in the Union Station pickup line if you instead can meet a block away on Massachusetts Avenue. I’ve saved passengers 15 minutes this way, but am also happy to pick them up at the front.

If you walk to a less crowded corner like this one, your ride may go a lot more smoothly. Image by Ted Eytan licensed under Creative Commons.

4. Go with the flow of traffic when you can

Assuming you can move around before you order a ride, pick a side of the street or even a different street moving in the same direction of your trip. “U Turns” aren’t always practical, safe or legal. And, sometimes, a driver can end up stuck in a series of one-way streets going in the wrong direction. That’s not fun anytime, especially if you’re stuck in traffic.

A well-planned trip that starts in the right direction can be faster and potentially cheaper. It’s been awkward when I finally get turned the right way for a pickup on congested Connecticut Avenue on a Saturday night and then we’re at a standstill in the wrong direction for the ride.

5. Be ready

Each ride hailing service has rules regarding how long drivers have to wait before cancelling. Drivers don’t want to be rule enforcers; they want to get you in the car and on the road. Especially during peak demand times, be ready to hop in. The next passenger who needs a ride will also benefit. I’ve had passengers call me two or three times with various reasons for their delay. I try to accommodate riders, but I also want to make money for my time.

6. Over communicate the tough places

If you are somewhere outside a sports venue, supermarket, mall, park or other large place, call your driver after you order your ride. If you already know it’s going to be hard to find you, share that with the driver before they start their approach.

Once, two students called me to say exactly where they were in the Safeway parking lot, which made it easy for me to pull right up to where they had several shopping bags to load.

7. Order big if you need big

If you’re lugging a TV or piles of luggage, or you have more than four passengers, order a larger vehicle (Lyft Plus or Uber XL). Drivers want to fit everything and everybody into their vehicle safely and without breaking the car. They also want to be fairly compensated for trips requiring a larger car. It wastes everyone’s time if a driver with a regular car arrives and asks you to cancel because you really needed a bigger car.

8. Don’t share if you can’t or won’t

Passengers can generally ask a driver to take a preferred route or stop along the way for trips that aren’t designed for sharing. But, if you pick a trip that can be shared like UberPool or Lyft Line, the company can assign other passengers to the trip at any point, even taking you a bit out of the way for pickup or drop off. Also, you can’t ask to stop along the way or pick the route (like one passenger who wanted me to take lots of side streets as a short cut); the company tells the driver where to go to potentially pick up passengers along the way. If that doesn’t work for you, pick a regular Lyft or UberX.

9. Hug the sidewalk side

Even when you have a full car, have everyone jump in and out on the sidewalk side. In busy areas or around fast moving cars, it’s tough for drivers to dodge people getting out on the street side. Drivers want to keep you safe and also can better see that you’re off the road when you all hop out on the sidewalk side. And don’t forget to look for bicyclists when you open the door.

Ride hailing is a great way to get around, but there are some key pieces to the trip that can cause delays and difficulty. Just like having your fare card ready if you’re about to take Metrorail, you can do things during your ride hailing trip to save you time and even some money.

Your driver will appreciate keeping things moving, and you’ll add a few minutes to spend at your destination instead of on the road.

In December, a traffic signal went up on Canal Road near Fletcher’s Boathouse, meaning there’s now a safe way for pedestrians and cyclists to cross that very recently did not exist. But if it weren’t for the work of DDOT’s urban foresters, a key sidewalk leading up to the crossing would still be totally useless.

Lots of the District’s 8,600 fishing license holders visit Fletcher’s to fish in the Potomac River or C&O Canal. It’s a popular place to rent bikes, boats, and canoes, and there are great places nearby to have a picnic or walk along the Canal.

For years, pedestrians and cyclists had no safe, direct route from the Palisades and adjacent neighborhoods to Fletcher’s Boathouse and the C&O Canal. For example, someone taking the D6 bus to MacArthur Road at U Street NW would have to walk the half mile down Reservoir Road, then bravely cross fast-moving traffic at an unsignalized intersection across Canal Road.

Canal Road and the Clara Barton Parkway form a barrier to pedestrian and cyclist access to the C&O Canal National Historic Park. The red dots represent existing crossing points, and green dots are existing parking lots. The more southern blue dot is where the new signal went in. Base image from Google Maps, with labels by Nick Keenan.

This changed this past December, when DDOT, in cooperation with the National Park Service, completed a crosswalk and traffic signal at Canal and Reservoir Road. The walk or bike ride across Canal Road became safe and feasible thanks to the crosswalk, a pedestrian or vehicle activated traffic signal, and marked areas for pedestrians to stand.

Pedestrian prepares to cross Canal Road NW using new traffic signal. Photo by the author.

A recently unusable sidewalk near the new signal is back in action!

Even with the work on the new signal underway, the sidewalk along Reservoir Road could have been featured as abandoned urban infrastructure. The actual connection to the neighborhood had in some places completely disappeared. Brush, grass, vines and invasive trees had completely overgrown the sidewalk, and nearly all of the quarter mile sidewalk from V Street down to Canal Road had uncontrolled vegetation growth.

Anyone walking or cycling would need to use the street in many places because the sidewalk was so obstructed.

Photo by DDOT.

Photo by DDOT.

This past August, as the intersection project progressed, I contacted DDOT’s Urban Forestry Administration (UFA) and asked them if they could take a look at the sidewalk. UFA confirmed that the trees were in fact invasive and had not been intentionally planted. And from there, foresters from the agency set about restoring the sidewalk.

The first things to go were bushes and other vegetation along the sidewalk. Foresters also chopped down the numerous invasive trees that had grown between the sidewalk and retaining wall and, in some cases, in the wall itself. Stumps of up to 4” in diameter remained, but they were cut as low as possible. And, finally, foresters removed the leaves and soil that had accumulated over the years.

After cutting down trees and before removing shrubs and vines. Photo by DDOT.

After final clean-up. Photo by DDOT.

The traffic signal and other intersection improvements added a decades-in-the-making crossing to Canal Road for pedestrians and cyclists. It also makes things safer for the 58,000 drivers who turn down into Fletcher’s Cove each year. But the less well known efforts of DDOT’s urban foresters completed what pedestrians and cyclists really needed in order to make the connection useful.

Top image: This sidewalk used to be covered in growth that made it nearly impossible to walk. Image by the author.

Across the region, grassroots efforts are underway to make it easier for elderly people to independently take care of errands and chores. But one group is recognizing the importance of mitigating these kinds of challenges for people of all ages.

College students help serve dinner at a meal hosted by Glover Park Village. Photo by Street Sense on Flickr.

Trips the doctor, food shopping, yard work, snow shoveling, and going to social events are all examples of things that can get harder as residents age or sustain long or short-term disabilities. Not having a way to do these things can cause people to live in isolation, eat poorly, worry a lot, and have a generally lower quality of life.

While residents sometimes ask for help from neighbors when they can’t do it all independently, volunteers often step in and help.

This is commonly referred to as “aging in place,” but more recently, “aging in community” has become the preferred term because “community” reflects the value of strong and fulfilling bonds that keep people engaged.

In 2010, Glover Park Citizens’ Association president Patricia Clark and a team of volunteers formed the Golden Glovers to formalize efforts to help seniors age in community, like seminars, financial counseling, and end of life care. Before they even got started, though, they widened their scope to include everyone in their community, recognizing that young and old residents alike face both temporary and permanent conditions that could force them away from independent living.

Very soon after it formed, the organization shed “Golden” from its name and started calling itself Glover Park Village because, as a participant in Washington Area Villages Exchange (WAVE) it wanted to apply the larger organization’s “village” concept.

Glover Park Village offers tons of different services

Glover Park Village offers a broad range of services to make independent living more feasible. Some residents need a helping hand with yard work, small fix-it projects and help using tools or computers. Sometimes volunteers help with taking winter clothes out of storage and decluttering living space. They also take people for walks, help with paperwork, and simply pay friendly visits.

Others residents request transportation to medical appointments, prescription pickup, mailing packages or grocery shopping. In those cases, Clark explained that the drive itself isn’t always why someone requests a ride to the doctor. Walking to and from parking spaces on both ends of the trip adds additional complexity, making a door-to-door drive more feasible.

Still others are interested in the home visits and seminars for the companionship and social interaction. Glover Park Village hosts regular gatherings with guest speakers, and attendees often say that simply getting together as a community means as much as the speaker’s topic.

Really, Glover Park Village volunteers do just about everything except personal medical care. Addressing the situations of those they help is often more like peeling layers of an onion than fixing a single problem, according to Clark.

“One neighbor needs an eye operation,” Clark says. “Then, he stays at home at least a week to recover. Transportation to and from the surgery is only part of his concern. We’re working with him to plan his meals and volunteers to keep him company. Before he schedules the surgery, he wants to see and feel comfortable about his daily routine.”

Glover Park Village has been running for five years now

At its five year anniversary, Glover Park Village boasts over 100 volunteers, including a pool of 20-30 available drivers, and provides services to over 100 residents. Glover Park Village currently gets its funding from donations, not charging a dime for its services or events.

When Glover Park Village formed, the GPCA and ANC3B provided nearly $10,000 over a three year period for early operating expenses such as background checks for volunteers, insurance, website, database, printing and postage. Now organization, currently relying on resident donations and volunteer efforts, is self-sustaining. The volunteers report that they appreciate their own opportunity to strengthen the community and connect with fellow residents.

Glover Park Village works with residents of more than just Glover Park. It has triangle shaped borders, with Glover-Archbold Park to the west, Whitehaven Parkway to the south and Massachusetts Avenue to the east— that means it covers Glover Park, Cathedral Heights, Massachusetts Avenue Heights, the Naval Observatory, and other nearby areas.

And in fact, neighborhoods across our region run a network of 48 villages that meet quarterly through WAVE to discuss issues such as end of life care, hospital discharges and financial liability. The DC Office on Aging organizes four seminars annually on topics relevant to villages.

Ultimately, the village movement is about more than senior citizens needing a ride. It’s a reflection of how neighbors organize to identify needs of individual residents living independently, resolve quality of life issues and build livable communities.

There are lots of ways to help keep your neighborhood safe during a storm, and speed recovery once it passes. From pitching in to clean up snow and ice to just staying off the roads or visiting neighbors, every little bit helps.

Photo by DVIDSHUB on Flickr.

On Wednesday, when we got our first (and much smaller!) wave of snow and ice, I watched a DC Circulator driver stop his bus and wait rather than drive on icy, untreated roads. Doing so meant blocking a lane of 37th Street NW, but it also meant that he was not putting people using the street at risk.

That got me thinking about how we can all help care for our communities when bad weather hits. Local governments can’t do it all, especially during events as historic as what we just experienced. Here are some things you can do:

Move snow off the sidewalk

Clear snow and ice, starting with your sidewalk and nearby curb cuts. If you can, help your neighbors who may not be able to shovel. It’s particularly helpful to focus on areas that, when clear, make it a lot easier to get around, like entrances to crosswalks and bus stops. Also, dig out areas around fire hydrants so firefighters can get to them quickly if there’s an emergency, and around storm drains so melting snow doesn’t cause flooding.

Worth noting: When you shovel, don’t just shovel the snow away from your house and onto other parts of the sidewalk; the entire block needs to be clear! Also, if you have a car and you clear it out, don’t try and save the spot. No one owns the street.

Use the roads sparingly and responsibly

Plows have made many major roads driveable. But officials across the region need us to avoid driving if possible because there’s still tons of snow to move, and they don’t want response resources going toward stuck cars. The fewer cars that are on the road, the easier it is for both plows and emergency vehicles to do their jobs. Pedestrians can also help by not walking on the roads unless that’s the only option for getting anywhere.

Drivers who absolutely need to be on the road should clean the ice and snow off windows, lights and roofs. Check out traffic cameras and news reports to plan your route, and rely on snow emergency routes and major roads that are treated more often; drive extra carefully and give priority to snow plows and emergency vehicles; watch for pedestrians in crosswalks or potentially on the roadway in places where sidewalks have not been cleared.

Stay informed and share information

Keep up to date on the weather and snow recovery activities in your area and across the region. Government officials and utilities need help spreading the latest information, which is constantly changing. These are some of the local governments you can sign up to get text alerts from:

Radio, television, and news and government websites also work well for broadly applicable information, and neighborhood listservs and social media like Twitter provide more localized updates.

Regardless of where you get information, there’s no guarantee all your neighbors have seen the same updates. Make sure to share what you find both online and by word of mouth— it never hurts to knock on a neighbor’s door and tell them what’s up.

Report issues quickly and often

During and after storms, it’s critical to quickly report water line breaks, natural gas leaks, dripping fire hydrants, or electrical outages, but keep in mind that utility crews may take longer to respond than normal and that problems that are usually quick fixes can be more difficult. Call 311 or report issues online that require local government attention, including knocked over street signs, traffic light outages, potholes, or street and sidewalk repair. And remember, crews would rather hear about a problem multiple times than not at all.

Take a walk around your building or street to visit those who you haven’t seen out and about during the storm. Sometimes even a brief “check in” can make all the difference, both for some needed social interaction and for safety. Some people may not have been able to go out since the storm started, and a friendly visit can mean the world to them. Single parents or other caregivers who have been at home for days might appreciate and accept an offer for childcare or watching those for whom they care.

For safety’s sake, talk with people you see shoveling the snow, especially the elderly or those who don’t often perform difficult physical tasks. If they are having trouble breathing or look tired, suggest they need a break from shoveling. Even with the worst of the storm over, ask neighbors if their smoke and carbon monoxide detectors work or if they want to have a free smoke detector installed. And check if they still have adequate supplies of batteries, water, food, and other safety essentials. It never hurts to ask if they have their list of emergency numbers to call, plus an easy way to contact a friend or relative for assistance.

Our actions and decisions make a big impact during and after a storm

Local governments continue to respond to and recover from the storm, but they can only reach one neighborhood at a time. We can all help speed up the pace by taking action in our community. And that can go a long way.

A November 6th email from Lyn Mento, the executive director of Friends of the National Zoo (which handles most of the Zoo’s communications to members), said the shorter hours would “protect and safeguard our visitors and animals, especially when it gets dark earlier in the fall and winter.”

But it’s unclear what, exactly, is threatening animals’ health and welfare. In fact, when it comes to actually explaining the safety concerns mentioned in the email, the the only thing Zoo director Dennis Kelly has clarified is that joggers literally run into the Zoo maintenance vehicles and that happens more when it’s dark. Here’s what he recently told the Washington Post:

“We’ve had for some time, going back years, increasing concern about safety and security,” Kelly said. “We’ve observed many near misses for walkers and joggers, particularly in the dark. We’ve had joggers with headphones bumping into parked vehicles.”

Rather than blaming visitors for the problem, the Zoo could let them help solve it

It seems like the Zoo is saying that its drivers shouldn’t have to act safely and responsibly.

The Post article, noticeably, does not specifically focus on vehicles running into joggers and pedestrians, and seems to only mention people running into vehicles. Rather than assembling a plan for keeping people safe— posting signs that communicate safety concerns, installing more lighting, marking pathways for vehicles and people, or making vehicles more visible, for example— the Zoo director’s statement positions joggers and pedestrians as the absolute cause of closing the Zoo for three extra hours everyday.

The focus on blame and consequences leaves the Zoo’s visitors locked out from a key decision. The analysis that informed Kelly and his staff is not available for member or public review, and that isn’t likely to change before the Zoo’s hours do.

There are more ways to fix safety issues than to just close a place down

There are lots of public venues where people driving vehicles need to account for people walking around. The National Park Service maintains the National Mall and other parkland using vehicles, mostly while the parkland is in use. Amusement parks stay open long hours during the summer, while resupplying concessions, picking up trash and making repairs.

The Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which accredits the National Zoo, operates a Safety Committee “for gathering and disseminating best practices in safety within zoos and aquariums.” This committee could serve as a resource for examining the full range of options to include best practices and professional training. The National Zoo’s director currently serves as an adviser to the committee, and a Fire Protection Engineer from the Zoo who serves as a member.

The Zoo could work with the committee to find ways to make its paths safer without just closing them.

The Zoo didn’t give the public much notice on this change, which isn’t a first

The decision appears to be sudden and based on an issue that had not previously been communicated to stakeholders in member newsletters, Congressional testimony or media interviews. Yet, the Zoo says this has been based on a longstanding problem.

Last summer, the Zoo shocked patrons and received national press coverage for closing its beloved Invertebrate Exhibit on six days’ notice. Kelly explained the brief transition time as the only way to maintain “our standard of quality” in the exhibit. Negative comments and feedback dominated social media and press coverage. Here’s an example from Wired magazine:

Having the nation’s zoo suddenly and with little public warning close a long-standing exhibit is unprecedented. Public comments on the Museum’s Facebook page are overwhelmingly shocked and negative, including some from volunteers that work at the Zoo.

By waiting until the last minute to announce changes that the public won’t like, is the Zoo limiting public discussion and criticism? I have no way of actually knowing, but I’ll say that it certainly seems that way.

The Woodley Park Community Association will host Dennis Kelly, the Zoo’s director, at its upcoming meeting for a discussion of the Zoo operating hours changes. The meeting is open to the public and will be held on Wednesday, December 2, 2015 at 7:30 pm at Stanford University in the Washington Building (2661 Connecticut Ave NW).

]]>Tue, 24 Nov 2015 16:45:00 +0000Mitch Wander (Contributor)The National Zoo will be open for 1,000 fewer hours in 2016https://ggwash.org/view/39937/the-national-zoo-will-be-open-for-1000-fewer-hours-in-2016
https://ggwash.org/view/39937/the-national-zoo-will-be-open-for-1000-fewer-hours-in-2016

Starting in 2016, the National Zoo’s grounds will be open for three fewer hours per day. Beyond not having as many chances to see the animals, the change means people who use the Zoo to walk and exercise early in the morning or late in the afternoon won’t be able to anymore.

Photo by m01229 on Flickr.

Year-round, the Zoo will open two hours later and close one hour earlier than it does now. That means it will open at 8 am instead of 6, and close at 5 pm in winter and 7 pm the rest of the year rather than the current 6 pm in winter and 8 pm otherwise. The later opening will allow the animal house buildings to open at 9 am, one hour earlier each day than they are now.

The changed hours are the equivalent of the Zoo shutting its doors 7.5 days a month compared to the current winter schedule.

There’s more to the Zoo than animals in buildings. When it’s open, residents walk through the grounds for fitness or relaxation before and after work or school. The Zoo grounds provide a direct east-west connection, especially for pedestrians. Also, a section of the Rock Creek Trail runs though the Zoo.

In an email to members earlier this month, the Zoo cited visitor and animal safety as the primary reason for this change, particularly when it gets dark on shorter fall and winter days. Not having the public on the grounds will also allow Zoo staff and vendors “to move freely around the park during early morning hours.”

What’s unclear, however, is the degree to which new safety measures are actually needed.

The Zoo is great in the early morning and late afternoon

Congress chartered the Zoo for “the advancement of science and the instruction and recreation of the people,” and some of its wonderful sights and sounds only happen outside during early morning hours. Visitors can watch the Zoo staff introduce new orangutans to the overhead “O Line” when there aren’t many people around, or hear sea lions bark or lions roar.

Nearby resident and Zoo member, Sheila Harrington, describes the value for her family of accessing the grounds prior to the Zoo’s planned 8 am opening.

I’ve been walking in the Zoo early in the morning, before starting work, often 2-3 times a week (unless it’s freezing or pouring), for decades. My husband used to visit the gibbons with each of our babies in a Snugli, and bonded with the mother gibbons similarly burdened. When the children were in strollers they rode along on my walks—up and down those hills pushing a stroller is a great workout. It’s quiet, mostly without vehicles, and the animals are lively and fascinating. Sometimes I stop to sketch. The Zoo staff are usually working on some interesting tasks. Opening at 8 am would be too late because I need to get to work!

@NationalZoo Cutting morning zoo hours would end a safe, cherished option for a morning walks in our neighborhood. Please reconsider.

The paths and roads that the Zoo maintains also fulfill transportation needs, intended or not. The Zoo’s 163 acres are directly adjacent to Rock Creek Park, an area with somewhat limited routes through the parkland.

When the Zoo closes its grounds in the evening, there are two big negative impacts to transportation. First, four Zoo entrance gates close across walking paths and roads that normally allow direct east-west (or west-east) routes into and through the Zoo for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers (yellow marks on the map below). Second, two gates close at the two ends of the north-south Rock Creek Trail within Zoo boundaries (green marks).

The yellow dots are entrances to east-west paths that cut through the Zoo, and the green dots are entrances to those that run north-south. Base image from Google Maps, with labels from the author.

Whether the four Zoo entrance gates are open affects anyone who wants to travel across the Zoo and Rock Creek at this point. Pedestrians can walk just 0.8 miles to get from the Harvard Street NW bridge through the Zoo to Connecticut Avenue NW. But the walk doubles to 1.5-1.6 miles when the Zoo is closed when they have to walk around to Porter Street NW or Calvert Street NW. The distance similarly doubles for cyclists and drivers when they have to use Calvert or Porter instead of North Road.

When the two trail gates close, pedestrians and cyclists instead need to traverse the Beach Drive tunnel on a narrow sidewalk. (This area will be widened in late 2016 and early 2017 by planned NPS construction.) DDOT, NPS and the Zoo explored closing Rock Creek Trail at night during the Rock Creek Park Multi-Use TrailEnvironmental Assessment. Trail users want to see it open 24/7, but Zoo insists this is infeasible “in order to maintain ... accreditation by the American Zoological and Aquarium Association (AZA).”

Zoo users are both surprised and disappointed by the change to fewer open hours. They’re also still unsure of what, exactly, the safety issue is because the Zoo did not release the crime or safety data used to support its decision or identify any potential alternatives.

Media coverage on crime at or near the National Zoo has focused on incidents that occurred on three separate Easter Monday events at the Zoo. A shooting in 2000, stabbing in 2011 and shooting in 2014 all occurred in late afternoon between 4 and 6 pm. These events were unfortunate, but they were isolated, and they happened in late April when even the new Zoo hours would mean it’d be open until 7.

Zoo management has historically been great about keeping up a dialog with members, visitors and nearby neighborhoods on an array of issues. But the Zoo hasn’t shared any details with the public regarding this decision. Even the announcement only went to members by email and on the public website, not appearing on any of the Zoo’s activesocialmediaaccounts.

Warren Gorlick, a nearby resident, said he wants to know the exact safety concerns that warrant the hours changes.

There is not much we know, however, because the [letter] ... was carefully worded to provide almost no details as to the underlying rationale. It simply mentioned “safety” issues repeatedly, without stating what they were or whether the zoo had considered methods other than restricting public access to the zoo. We have to wonder what is causing this sudden concern about “safety” right now that would result in such a major cutback in public access to this space.

Can Zoo users prompt a change of course?

Zoo users want to understand whether closing the Zoo is the best solution to keep visitors, staff and animals safe, but the Zoo’s email is correct in saying the change will “frustrate” some patrons. The closure of Zoo grounds three hours a day represents a significant change in public access to the animals and walking trails. The plan to add one hour of animal house access during hours when the grounds were open anyway doesn’t outweigh the overall reduction to grounds access.

What remains to be seen is whether the Zoo will share details behind the safety concerns. There may be other options through sponsorships to support hiring more security staff, partnerships with other law enforcement agencies or even establishing community watch groups. Without more information, we only see the locked gates in the name of keeping visitors safely on the outside.

Photo by Tim Herrick on Flickr.

The Woodley Park Community Association will host Dennis Kelly, the Zoo’s director, at its upcoming meeting for a discussion of the Zoo operating hours changes. The meeting is open to the public and will be held on Wednesday, December 2, 2015 at 7:30 pm at Stanford University in the Washington Building (2661 Connecticut Ave NW).

For the first time, there are lane markings on the narrow section of Wisconsin Avenue NW that runs from Q Street to R. They make for a nice opportunity to study how narrow lanes work on major roadways in the District.

New lane markings along a section of Wisconsin Avenue NW. Photo by the author.

27,350 vehicles per weekday use the stretch of Wisconsin Avenue that’s south of Massachusetts Avenue. It has between four and six lanes during peak traffic, plus rush hour parking restrictions. Wisconsin also serves as an emergency evacuation and snow emergency route.

North of M Street in Georgetown, two marked lanes in each direction allow non-peak parking along the outside lanes. During rush hour, the outside lanes become the second driving lane each way. However, the roadway physically narrows by several feet after the Exxon at P until the library at R Street. North of that Wisconsin widens again and provides two, and in some places three, lanes in each direction during peak hours until it reaches the Maryland line.

Base image from Google Maps.

Until recently, the roadway along the narrow stretch, which is about a quarter of a mile, had no lane markings other than the center line. That made things unclear for drivers: were there one or two lanes in each direction? Some drove in the middle of the available space and others attempted to share the entire width for two lanes on each side.

The “new” lanes are atypical, but DDOT says they’ve been that way for a while

New lane markings went onto the strip in early October. A simple set of white painted stripes clarifies that on each side of the double yellow lines, the 16.5 feet provides two lanes of peak hour traffic in each direction. In non-peak hours, it’s one lane of traffic and a parking lane in each direction.

DDOT usually follows a standard width of 10-12 feet of paved surface width for each driving lane. Along the stretch of Wisconsin between P and R Streets, there is only 33 feet of paved width, excluding the one foot brick gutter along each side. That’s seven feet shy of the 40’ DDOT often reserves for a roadway with four lanes of peak traffic, during rush hour parking restrictions.

DDOT doesn’t usually make changes without considering engineering standards, traffic studies and (usually) community input. DDOT Director of Communications Terry Owens says adding these markings wasn’t a “change,” but rather a “clear denotation of lane configurations.”

“With no markings, it may be unclear to drivers during peak periods that there are, in fact, two lanes of travel in each direction,” he adds. But motorists who previously concluded there was only a single lane probably view this as a change. One day there were no markings and the next day there were. Visually, the roadway doesn’t resemble most District arterial roadways.

This is a chance to see narrower lanes at work

These newly clarified narrow lanes average approximately 8.25 feet wide, including the lane markings themselves. There’s also a one-foot brick gutter next to each outer lane.

This logic—that higher design speeds make for safer streets—coupled with the typical city engineer’s desire for unimpeded traffic—has caused many American cities to rebuild their streets with lanes that are 12, 13, and sometimes even 14 feet wide. Now, cars are only six feet wide—a Ford Excursion is 6’-6’‘—and most Main Streets were historically made of 10-foot lanes. That dimension persists on many of the best, such as ritzy Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, Florida. Yet, many cities I visit have their fair share of 13-footers, and that is where much of the speeding occurs.

By clearly marking the lanes on Wisconsin, DDOT has created a quarter mile where we can see how skinnier, presumably safer lanes work on a major corridor. Four clearly defined and narrow lanes— much narrower than the 10-12 feet DDOT typically goes with— is probably quite appropriate for an urban street with a 25 mph speed limit.

In other words, this simple, low-cost change could go a long way toward making it safer to walk or bike along this corridor, which is adjacent to Georgetown Neighborhood Library and within blocks of Jelleff Recreation Center, Duke Ellington School of the Arts, and Hardy Middle School.

Some bus drivers appear to straddle both lanes due to vehicle width. Photo by the author.

This width may not be perfect for every vehicle or situation. The roadway math becomes a bit tighter for an ambulance on its way to Georgetown Hospital, as ambulances are typically eight feed wide. Same for 30 route Metrobuses or Circulator buses, which are eight and a half feet wide. My anecdotal observations during rush hour indicate that bus and ambulance drivers often decide to use the middle of both lanes. Most drivers will find that their cars and similarly sized vehicles will fit in these lanes with room to spare.

After nearly a month, the change hasn’t attracted any noticeable discussion or coverage. We are taking the theory to reality just like Jeff Speck envisioned in his criticism of the fat lanes traffic engineers tend to favor. It might not be clear why DDOT made it clear that this stretch of Wisconsin has two narrow lanes in each direction, but it’s fantastic that it happened nonetheless.

There was track work on the Red Line last weekend, and as it turned out, a smoke incident as well. Both Mitch Wander and David Alpert were riding the Red Line, and the experiences yielded plenty of examples of the bad and the good of Metro and other transportation choices.

A family (not Mitch’s or David’s) in the snow. Photo by Amber Wilkie on Flickr.

Mitch says, “My son and I considered car2go or Uber for an early morning trip from Glover Park to Catholic University. Uber had surge pricing in effect, likely because there were few cars on the road, but there were two nearby cars2go. We walked to the first only to find it parked on a patch of ice and on a hill. But the second one fit the bill.”

Meanwhile, David and his daughter were going to Tenleytown. He says, “We’ve mostly given up on using Metro on weekends when there’s track work (and often, sadly, even when there’s not). But we didn’t want to drive back in a major snowstorm, so we tried the Red Line even though the Metro website said service was only running every 20 minutes.

“We just missed a train to Shady Grove by a few seconds, but fortunately, though the website didn’t mention this, there were some extra trains just from Dupont to Shady Grove (and from Judiciary Square to Glenmont), one of which pulled in shortly after.”

The snowstorm begins

By the time both families were coming back, the snow was coming down heavily.

There were nearly two inches of snow on the ground when Mitch and his son left Catholic University just before noon. He says, “I overruled my son’s suggestion to use car2go again. Instead, we decided to take Metro to Tenleytown and either take Metrobus or get a ride from my wife home.

“We walked to the Brookland-CUA Metro station. The first train arrived but the conductor announced that the train would go out of service at Judiciary Square without explaining why. We waited for the next train which continued downtown.

“At Dupont Circle, the train stopped with doors open for several minutes. There were still no announcements, but Twitter showed photos of smoke at the Woodley Park station.”

“My son and I left, as did a few other passengers I informed about the problem. People by the bus stop said that the D2 had not been running for 45 minutes, so after trying to walk a few blocks, we decided to use Uber despite the 1.7x surge pricing. A car arrived within 10 minutes.”

Another Metro delay compounds problems

David and his daughter left a little later, at 12:30. It was difficult to even push a stroller two blocks up a small hill to the Metro along sidewalks with fresh snow. This was not a time to be driving.

“Another ‘special’ train pulled in right as they got to the platform, which I knew wouldn’t go through downtown, but he initially assumed it would reach Dupont before turning. However, it instead went out of service at Woodley Park. The conductor also did not explain why; I guessed that perhaps the train was going to wait in the pocket track before going to Dupont, though it also could have related to the smoke which I didn’t yet know about.

“The conductor announced that another train was 20 minutes behind, and the signs confirmed this. This seemed odd since the wait between through trains was supposed to be 20 minutes, and the special was surely in between. Nonetheless, we settled in for a wait. Since mobile phone service works in Woodley Park, they were able to play music and watch videos.

“However, 20 minutes later, there was no train,though multiple trains had passed outbound. The top ‘Glenmont’ line on the digital displays showed a blank space instead of a time estimate. Eventually, the station manager announced that there was a disabled train at Friendship Heights.

Photo by David Alpert.

“I considered bailing on Metro, but my daughter is too small to ride in a car2go or an Uber without a carseat. There were no Uber vehicles with carseats available at all, according to the app, even at a surge rate.

“The platform had grown quite crowded at this point. Fortunately, Metro sent an empty special train in the opposite direction to pick up waiting passengers (even though, as Twitter showed, having a train pass by without picking them up annoyed some people waiting at Dupont Circle).

“An employee arrived on the platform and told people that a train would come within 15 minutes. And it did. The total trip ended up taking about an hour.”

What can we learn from this story? There are a few conclusions we can draw:

Travelers have so many options, which is terrific. Mitch and his son used three modes of transportation (car2go, Metroail, and Uber) and considered two others (Metrobus and private car). He says, “I think my son takes for granted that we can seamlessly jump from one transportation option to another.” If one mode is struggling, as Metrorail did, many people can opt to switch.

Modern technology is extremely helpful to compare options. It wouldn’t have been possible to find out about the smoke so quickly or evaluate as many choices without today’s smartphones, apps, and social media. We didn’t have these options or this timely, decentralized information even just a few years ago, and it’s transformed mobility.

Metro still can do far, far more to communicate about outages. Neither Mitch nor David knew about the short-turning special trains before riding one, and the website didn’t talk about them. Some train announcements are hard to understand because of bad equipment and/or train operators who mumble through their explanations.

The following day, David and his daughter rode the Metro again, and when arriving at Dupont on a special train which was turning around, he overheard a rider saying, “I don’t understand how this system works.” People get confused and frustrated during planned or unplanned disruptions. Communication wouldn’t stop all frustration, but could stop the confusion and reduce anger.

We’re still lucky to have Metro even despite all its problems (which are many). Even though it took an hour to get from Tenleytown to Dupont Circle, that was better than trying to drive. Buses were not running. Walking was out of the question. Underground trains had a lot of problems, but they still worked. Maybe that’s not much to be happy about, but people in most cities and even most parts of our region don’t even have that.

With maps, specifically, WMATA handles the cartography because it owns the bus stop location data. Clear Channel is then responsible for printing and installing them — each shelter is supposed to have a map on the inside and, assuming the outside also faces a sidewalk, outside. DDOT’s role is oversight over Clear Channel.

Bus riders can help get maps replaced

When a map is missing from a bus shelter, riders can submit request replacements (as well fixes to things like vandalism and broken glass) by calling 311, using SeeClickFix, or by contacting WMATA; DDOT then forwards reports from 311 or WMATA to Clear Channel, who does the physical work.

DDOT says that it hasn’t received a map-related request over the past year. Perhaps riders don’t realize they’re the first in line to report missing maps. Or maybe they don’t know how to file a report.

After I started collecting information for this post, DDOT informed me that they’re going to add a category to 311’s automated phone and online systems for bus shelter maintenance, and that they’ll work with the Office of Unified Communications to ensure it knows how to route the requests it receives.

Currently, with DDOT encouragement, WMATA is conducting full refresh of all bus shelter maps in the District, meaning it’s updating the content of all maps. The last time WMATA did this was six and a half years ago.

What it comes down to is that people who notice missing maps should file a report, and those reports need to get to the right place. The refresh, along with DDOT making the communication system better, should help.

Maps make bus travel accessible for people who can’t or don’t want to use smart phones. It’s just that they’re useless if they’re not there.

Trees give us shade and beauty, so it’s no wonder a lot of DC residents would want to help care for them. But while residents are still the first line of care for older trees, DDOT has a great safety net that boosts their efforts and helps new street trees thrive.

DDOT’s Urban Forestry Administration (UFA) inspects all of its new trees within the first year of planting, and it’s quick to respond to service requests for older trees as well. Beyond that, UFA keeps notes of what its arborists find and, and it makes public its plans for resolving the issue.

One criticism of the planting program voiced in 2010 was that the District was planting trees and then hoping residents would volunteer to water and care for them through UFA or Casey Trees. If nobody stepped up during the cool fall and winter, those same trees would all too often die during the first hot summer.

Fast forward to 2014, and DDOT has really stepped up its efforts. UFA is keeping metrics on not only first year trees, but also starting to track metrics on trees in their second year of growth.

Residents and business owners are still the ones who need to water trees that are more than a year old. But DDOT now installs a watering bag on all new trees, and during the summer it also waters them twice a month throughout their first year. There have been over 62,000 “watering events” for trees planted within the past year, and trees have gulped down over one million gallons of water in the time span. There’s even a nifty animated video showing the weekly watering activities from this past summer.

UFA’s agreement with its contractor allows for easy tree replacement

C&D Tree Service, DDOT’s contractor, charges $268 $295 for each tree it plants. For that price, C&D provides a warranty on each tree that that replaces trees that are dead, dying, or in poor condition which is the case if a tree has less than 90 percent live canopy. The only trees C&D isn’t responsible for are those damaged by vandals, drivers, or thieves.

UFA conducted a warranty replacement on 125 trees over the past year after residents submitted requests via calling 311. Beyond those requests, in September UFA arborists inspect every new trees planted during the previous fall and winter, resulting in several hundred more warranty replacements.

With the exception of one anomaly, the last half-decade has been great for DC trees

With all this care and attention, 19 out of 20 trees thrive after the first year. Prior to this past year, UFA reported tree mortality and warranty replacement within a very low range, 4.5-7.0 percent, over the past four seasons.

Ward

Trees planted

Warranty replacements required

1

388

59

2

591

60

3

1129

191

4

1080

151

5

955

166

6

1013

141

7

1203

200

8

982

171

Unfortunately, UFA’s supervisory forester Earl Eustler reports, last year was rough, as tree mortality spiked to approximately 15 percent. “In my 11 years of planting street trees in DC,” he said, “last year was the first in which the earth actually froze beyond a depth of a few inches near the surface.”

This year, DDOT plans to alter the planting schedule if a similar situation occurs.

As residents, our watering and tree-related service requests serve a critical role in expanding our tree canopy. With our help and UFA’s ongoing improvements, the District left the age of “plant and forget” in the past. Newly planted trees, when taken care of, will be part of our community for years to come.

Editor’s note: We’ve received clarification from UFA that while $268 was the cost per tree with warranty during the first year of the contract. We’re now in the fifth year and the contract cost is $295 per tree.